Jog Road is nearly wholly put together, giving drivers a straight path from Boca Raton to Jupiter.
Except the county still has a nearly 2-mile gap to fill before Jog can claim its true destiny. That missing link, between Roebuck Road and 45th Street, remains in limbo because West Palm Beach has objections to the project.
While $30 million has been set aside for the missing link, the project is “on hold” for now and could be further delayed, said Omelio Fernandez, the county’s roadway production director.
The county needs land from the city and permits for the project to move forward.
West Palm Beach has fought the missing link because it intersects with the city’s drinking water supply at Grassy Waters Preserve, located at the western edge of the city.
“We depend on that ecosystem to supply our drinking water,” said Elliot Cohen, the city’s spokesman. “Construction around there and continuous use of the road has the potential to destroy that system.”
West Palm Beach has used that same issue to object to other road projects in the west, including the extension of State Road 7.
However, County Commissioner Hal Valeche said he would like to see the city and county resolve the problem so that Jog can continue on its path.
“We’re determined to take traffic off I-95 and Military Trail and provide an alternative way to get people north and south without going east, especially since we have so much growth in the western part of the county,” he said.
The county has now opened up one of the last missing links – a nearly 1-mile stretch between Bee Line Highway and Northlake Boulevard. Since the 1990s, Palm Beach County has filled in missing gaps in the road to create a major north-south corridor in the suburban western reaches of the county.
For more than 20 years, the county envisioned Jog running from the Broward-Palm Beach county line to Donald Ross Road. On its path through the county, it closely parallels Florida’s Turnpike, running to the east of the highway in the south and then to the west of it in the north.
The county has steadily stitched together the road over the past two decades. In the 1990s, gaps were filled between Atlantic Avenue and Boynton Beach Boulevard and between Belvedere Road and Okeechobee Boulevard.
In 2004, the county extended Jog north from Jaega Middle School to a new stretch of Roebuck Road. A few years later, the turnpike opened up a new interchange at Bee Line and Jog. Around the same time, the county completed the extension of Jog between Hood Road and Donald Ross.
This latest link to Northlake fills an important role by connecting Northlake drivers to the turnpike interchange at Bee Line and Jog, Valeche said. Otherwise, they would have to go to the next closest turnpike interchange to the north at PGA Boulevard.
Now, it’s time to focus on the last missing link, Valeche said.
But West Palm Beach’s objections aren’t the only ones stifling Jog’s growth. Residents west of Boca Raton have successfully campaigned against widening Jog, where it’s known as Powerline Road, to six lanes between the county line and Palmetto Park Road.
The county, however, still has plans in 2018 to widen Jog to six lanes between Glades and Yamato roads.
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